


This Is Gospel

by TheNarator



Series: The Adoption AU [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Non-Spanish Speaking Author Writing Spanish Dialgoue, Obsession, Parent-Child Relationship, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, sorry about that, terms of endearment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Harrison Wells adopts Cisco when he's a child, and it goes downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Gospel

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't really set on E1 or E2, so let's call it E1.5 -- where harrison wells was never replaced by eobard but tess died anyway, and harrison has always been a bit of a wacko. barry's mom never died so he never went to live with the west family, and zoom is the villain despite barry being the flash.

Cisco Ramon is eleven years old when he nearly burns down his school at the fifth grade science fair.

He should be in middle school by now, every teacher he's ever had has wanted to bump him up a grade (or two, or three) but Mama had refused to sign the forms. Something about embarrassing Dante, and how it wouldn't be fair to make him tell his friends that his younger brother was in the same grade as him, or worse,  _higher._  Cisco thinks his best friend Barry is so lucky to be an only child; his parents let him skip two grades, while Cisco is still stuck in elementary school. So it's at the fifth grade science fair that he shows off the experiment he's been working on for months, and it's really not his fault that literally everyone else made volcanoes so there are way more fumes in the air than he'd anticipated.

The Principle doesn't see it that way. Anything that requires the fire department to be called is an automatic suspension, and he tells Cisco he should count himself lucky he isn't being expelled. Mama thinks so too, and she whacks him with a wooden kitchen spoon and tells him he has to turn the pages of Dante's sheet music while he practices.

"For how long?" Cisco wants to know.

"Forever," Mama says, raising the kitchen spoon to whack him again if he disagrees.

"Better not fall behind in school Cisquito," Dante smirks, "it'll be embarrassing for me to have a brother who had to repeat a grade."

Cisco doesn't have to worry about that, because the next day the superintendent calls and shakily tells Mama that Cisco can come back to school. Cisco's curious (he's always curious) but Mama doesn't ask questions, and when he tries to she tells him to be grateful. Cisco doesn't see why he should be grateful, but he doesn't want to get whacked with the spoon again.

Then, two days later, a letter comes for him. It has the seal of an  _extremely_  fancy private school and Cisco is  _dying_  to know what it says, but Mama snatches it and opens it first. She skims the first few lines critically, then tosses it in the trash.

"Junk," she pronounces it.

Cisco fishes it out of the trash anyway. "Mama!" he says in alarm after reading it. "They're offering me a scholarship!"

"You're not going to some expensive school," Mama snaps.

"But Mama they're offering me a full ride!" Cisco protests. "You won't have to pay anything!"

"Your brother goes to public school," Mama tells him sternly, "and he's a musical prodigy. If it's good enough for Dante, it's good enough for you."

Apparently that's  _not_  good enough for Dr. Harrison Wells, because two weeks later he shows up at their door.

Of course Cisco knows who Dr. Wells is, but Mama has no idea, so there's a bit of confusion that has Cisco nearly dying of embarrassment before his mother will even let the greatest technology entrepreneur of all time into their house.

"The school was concerned," he explains mildly, "when there was no reply from you. They want Cisco to transfer immediately."

"He's not going," Mama says firmly, still eyeing him suspiciously, and all Cisco wants in the  _world_  is to be able to tell Mama to be more polite, that this is  _Dr. Harrison Wells_  she has in her living room and this time  _she_  should be grateful.

"You don't need to worry about the money," Dr. Wells assures her gently. "I'm sponsoring his education myself."

"What?" Cisco squeaks, then shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click when Dr. Wells turns those kind, intelligent eyes on him. It feels like those eyes can see right through him, and for some reason they don't narrow in annoyance.

"He's not going," Mama repeats, sitting up a little straighter, "not while his brother is still in public school."

"Are they close?" Dr. Wells asks, a bit impatiently.

"No!" Cisco and Dante say at the same time, glaring at each other.

"Then I don't see-"

"Dante is an extremely talented concert pianist," Mama says proudly. "I won't have Cisco sent to some fancy private school for nearly burning down the gym, while Dante is left behind for being an angel."

Dr. Wells gives her an understanding, if slightly strained, smile. "I'm sure there's a school for performing arts in Central City that would be happy to have him," he assures her, and  _now_  suddenly Mama is listening.

Cisco's a little nervous about the idea of going to an actual boarding school, but once he starts there he loves it. Dr. Wells is the one sponsoring his education, so it's his signature they need to skip him forward, and before he knows it he's flying through elementary and then middle school. At twelve he's already in high school, although his exact grade is a bit confusing because he's studying all his subjects on different levels. Well, he says studying, but it's more like just figuring out how to test out of the class. It takes more time to persuade some teacher than others.

Dr. Wells comes to see him regularly, takes him out to lunch or for ice cream, and is more than happy to listen to him babble about what he's learning. Or more accurately, what he's  _teaching,_  because more often than not what gets him skipped forward is proving that he knows more than the teacher does. Mama would smack him for talking back to an adult, but Dr. Wells just laughs in delight at each new story. He asks Cisco to call him Harrison and talks about his plans for the particle accelerator, talks like he actually expects Cisco to understand instead of talking down to him like a child. The only thing Cisco really misses from his old life is Barry, but they text each other every day, so it isn't that bad. It's a small price to pay, and he's never been happier.

Then, Mama tries to pull him out of school.

Dante has flunked out of his fancy music school, apparently; something about too many absences. Cisco hadn't really been keeping up with what's going on in his family, but they weren't exactly keeping up with him either. They haven't forgotten about him though, and if Dante has to go back to public school then so does he. Cisco calls Dr. Wells -- Harrison -- crying, begging him to  _do_ something. He doesn't want to go back. He doesn't know if the public school system will honor the grades he's skipped, or if Mama will even let them.

Just like he did with the scholarship, though, Harrison comes sweeping in to fix everything. He makes another deal with Mama, to call Dante's school and persuade them to give him another chance. In exchange, she'll let Cisco come live with him. Permanently.

***

Harrison is a little concerned that Cisco won't take this well. Glad as he is that his boy is now his by law, he can't help but be a little disgusted at a mother who would sign away custody of her youngest child to advance the older one. Clearly Dante is the favorite with their parents, something which Harrison cannot fathom given how brilliant Cisco is. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes he never would have imagined a parent who could ignore the sheer genius Cisco exhibits, his wit, his warmth, his humor. He shudders to think what Cisco has had to endure in that house, with those  _people_.

Still, it doesn't matter now. Cisco is  _his_ , and no one is going to take him away.

As it turns out he needn't have worried. Cisco is almost as eager to leave that wretched house and all its occupants behind as they are to be rid of him. Harrison resolves to ensure that Cisco never wants to leave his house, to make Cisco feel so safe, so special, so loved in his new home that he forgets the home that came before. At first his boy is a little cautious, not sure if he can trust this turn of events, but it's not long before he settles into his new circumstances and Harrison can relax and begin to enjoy his company in earnest.

He sends people to pick up Cisco's belongings from the house, refusing to allow his boy to spend another second in that hell. There isn't much to take though, most of his belongings were at school, so for the most part it's Harrison and Cisco that move him into the palatial house on the outskirts of the city. He replaces all the electronics, although he stores away the laptop Cisco had built  _himself_ , like an album of baby pictures or an award-winning art project. Certainly the thing could be considered a work of art.

He's excited to see what Cisco will think of the laptop  _he_  designed, the STAR Labs model Harrison had created chiefly because the computers of his time lacked the capabilities he needs. At first Cisco seems pleased with it, but after a few weeks he rather timidly asks if he can make a few small modifications. Curious, Harrison tells Cisco he can do as he likes, which proves as ever to a surprising and enlightening experience. At his request Cisco documents his tweaks on a set of schematics, and Harrison is shocked to discover that he's improved the operating efficiency by nearly 40% with only a few small adjustments. He quickly makes the new system standard issue, and is sure to tell Cisco how brilliant he is, which judging by his reaction is a tragically new experience for him. Never, Harrison decides, will he deny this child the praise he deserves. He  _needs_  to know how amazing he is.

It takes a while for Cisco to adjust, to start accepting the compliments Harrison gives him and the affection that he's clearly unused to. Day by day though Harrison watches him warm to his new life, and nothing since the night of the car accident when he lost Tess has made him happier.

Tess would have adored Cisco, he thinks. She'd have loved a child like him, bright and brilliant and eager. He's sure she would have taken as much joy as he does in Cisco's cleverness, the stories of his classroom shenanigans, his quick wit and intelligent humor. She'd have been a good mother to him. Harrison resolves to be parent enough for both of them.

"You don't have to call me Dad if you don't want to," he assures Cisco, stroking his hair fondly late one night as they're watching old movies.

"I wouldn't call you Dad even if you were my Dad," Cisco replies sleepily. Harrison loves him like this, relaxed and unguarded, a testament to the fact that he feels  _safe_  now, like he never did in his old home. "I'd call you Papi."

Harrison smiles widely. Cisco's first language is more Spanglish than anything, so he'd realized early on that the only way to make him feel truly at home would be to learn Spanish as well. He hasn't told Cisco about his studies yet though; he wants to surprise him, so Harrison feigns ignorance.

"And what would I call you," he asks teasingly, "if I were Papi?"

"Dante calls me Cisquito," Cisco wrinkles his nose in distaste, "but you're too nice to call me something like that. Mama calls Dante cariño. Or angel, but that means the same in English."

"What about cielo?" Harrison asks.

Cisco looks up at him in surprise. "That means 'sky'," he explains cautiously, frowning as though trying to puzzle him out. "But it's one of those tricky words that's hard to translate, because 'mi cielo' also kind of means 'my whole world' and-"

"Tú eres mi cielo," Harrison cuts him off, hoping fervently that he'd constructed the sentence correctly and that his accent wasn't too terrible. Cisco shivers a little, staring at him in wonderment, and Harrison's heart breaks for him because clearly no one's ever been this fond of him.

Cisco opens his mouth to say something, but in the end he just stares up at Harrison as though star-struck.

"You can call me whatever you want," Harrison assures him, leaning down to kiss his forehead, "but you are mi cielo, Cisco."

***

Every publication short of the scientific journals explodes with stories about the adoption. The great Harrison Wells, childless widower and inventor extraordinaire, has adopted some random Latino kid from a low-income neighborhood. Some of them say it's a publicity stunt, but Harrison has no patience with those people and orders Cisco not to listen to them. The less gossipy papers wonder if Harrison will be distracted from STAR Labs and the particle accelerator, but Harrison assures them all that he is still the head of STAR Labs and the projected launch day for the accelerator has not been pushed back. Cisco's actually worried about that for a little while, but it gets easier once he goes back to school.

Now that he's Harrison Wells' son, rather than just a kid whose education is being sponsored, the few stubborn teachers who refuse to admit he's smarter than they are purely on principle usher him quickly through the required exams to skip him towards graduation. At fourteen he has his diploma, and he doesn't even have to apply to Central City College before his acceptance letter comes in. College Professors are a little more stubborn than high school teachers, he finds out, but by now he's mastered the art of dealing with people who think they're smarter than him. Sooner or later he manages to correct them in front of the class enough that they get frustrated with him, and the ensuing conversations are all virtually identical.

"If you're so smart," they challenge, shoving the schematics for something or other under his nose, "build me this!"

"Will you give me credit for the class if I do?" Cisco asks.

"Sure kid," they reply, sneering.

Then, in an hour or so, they stop sneering and give him credit for the course.

Barry comes to all his graduations: high school, college, and then finally getting his Master's in Engineering at age 17. Harrison looks at him a little oddly, but says nothing. Neither Dante nor anyone else in Cisco's family -- his birth family, he corrects himself -- come to see him graduate from anywhere. He thinks, sometimes, about contacting them, but whenever he brings up the possibility with Harrison it always seems to be a bad time.

When Cisco starts working at STAR Labs there's another spike of public interest. People seem to have decided he's not a charity project and have now dubbed him the Heir Apparent, the Chosen One destined to inherit the empire in absence of an actual child. They all seem to think Harrison is some tragic romantic hero, eternally devoted to his lost love Tess Morgan, and Cisco is some means of compensating for the child they never had. Harrison doesn't talk about Tess much, but he does assure Cisco that nothing about their relationship is meant as a surrogate for something else.

"Mijo," he says, kissing Cisco's forehead, "tú eres mi cielo, never forget that."

The particle accelerator still needs a lot of work, and all Cisco wants is the chance to get his hands on it. Harrison places him on a team led by Hartley Rathaway, a young prodigy only a year older than Cisco, and seems exceedingly pleased that Cisco will finally be around intellects of his own caliber. Hartley's a bit of a dick, but Cisco makes friends with everyone else easily. In particular he likes Dr. Caitlin Snow, who seems to be the personification of grace under pressure, and her fiance Ronnie Raymond, whose passion for his work is rivaled only by Cisco's own. Seeing them together is like watching a step-by-step of how love should work, and every time he looks at them Cisco can't help but think what great parents they'll be.

Hartley really is a dick, but he's a brilliant dick, and Cisco can respect that. Eventually he comes to respect Cisco too, grudgingly and without saying so aloud. Cisco would be lying if he said he didn't think Hartley suspected that his position had been the result of nepotism, but it doesn't take someone of Hartley's genius-level intellect to work out that Cisco is brilliant. Of course, that doesn't stop the two of them from rubbing each other the wrong way, and more than once they have to very hurriedly quell a shouting match as Harrison walks into the Cortex.

It's in the middle of one such shouting match, late at night when only the two of them are still there, that Cisco discovers Hartley speaks Spanish.

"I didn't come here to play games Cisquito," Hartley spits the word as though the language itself were foul on his tongue. "I came here to work on something that will change the world."

"Yo tambien, Pendejo," Cisco shoots back, assuming Hartley won't understand. It doesn't take a lot of googling to work out 'Cisquito.'

"Miras quién habla, Tonto," Hartley replies, and despite his terrible accent the words slide smoothly off his tongue. There's no stuttering or trace of hesitation, and for some reason that hits him harder than it really should. All kinds of strange feelings swirl up inside him, make him want to run away and keep shouting at the same time, until the only thing he can think to do next is shove Hartley against the nearest wall and kiss the breath for insults out of him.

Hartley is, apparently, very much on board with this plan.

They have to keep it a secret, obviously. Hartley's not out to his parents yet and Cisco's never really been  _with_  anyone before, so neither of them are particularly ready for the scandal that's likely to ensue. Cisco doesn't really think Harrison would mind, he adores Hartley after all, but Cisco and Hartley still don't really  _like_  each other, despite sleeping together, and he doubts they could play the happy couple for the press. He doesn't want to lose Hartley though, and the very idea of having a clandestine affair with a coworker is a little exciting in itself, so he sneaks around and keeps things quiet for the moment.

That isn't to say that Harrison doesn't notice something's off. He keeps insisting that Cisco is 18 now and can do as he likes, but he always seems to be waiting up when Cisco comes home late, claiming that he couldn't sleep. There are other signs for him to pick up too: while Cisco and Hartley try to keep things professional at work, behind closed doors they're not exactly . . . gentle, with each other.

***

The first time Cisco comes home with a bruise on his left temple, Harrison's heart nearly stops. It's a new experience, seeing his boy, his  _child,_  injured in any way. A thousand possibilities for how Cisco might have come by that bruise spin through his head, each one worse than the last but one standing out clearly as the worst of them all.

"What happened?" he demands, grasping Cisco's chin firmly to examine the mark.

"Nothing," Cisco says evasively. He's a terrible liar, which is a testament to how little practice he's had. He's never felt the need to keep secrets before, and Harrison trembles inside at the thought of what could be so bad that Cisco couldn't tell him.

"This isn't nothing," he insists, voice harsh but fingers gentle as he probes the tender, purple skin.

"It's not a big deal," Cisco replies. He won't look at Harrison, like he's ashamed of something, and the worst possibility seems too likely to ignore.

Harrison decides to bite the bullet. "Did you go back to that neighborhood?" he asks, and his voice sounds strange even to his own ears. It quivers with fear at the potential disaster that may come from the answer.

Cisco, however, blinks in bewilderment. "What neighborhood?"

"The one where-" Harrison cuts himself off to clear his throat. Cisco's look of confusion is genuine, and Harrison's worst fears are silenced. He hadn't even thought of going back to that house, to that street where people of little means and fewer morals roamed at night, perfectly willing to turn on one of their own for the money in his pocket.

"No," he breathes, relieved. "Never mind. Just, promise me you won't put yourself in danger, mijo. Promise me."

"Of course," Cisco says without hesitation, his trust in Harrison complete and unwavering, his desire to please him as steady as ever it had been. "I promise."

"Mi cielo," Harrison whispers, pulling him close, savoring the solid, comforting presence of his child in his arms. "Don't scare me like that."

***

It doesn't take long, though, for the sneaking around to stop being a viable option. Hartley lives alone, thank goodness, but Cisco still can't stay the night because he's always expected home. He doesn't even know  _what_  Harrison would do if Cisco stayed out all night. The police would probably get involved.

"The solution is simple then, Cisquito," Hartley says, tone condescending even as he nuzzles gently at the particularly vicious hickey he's left on Cisco's shoulder. "Get your own place."

It's not a bad idea, nor an unreasonable one. Cisco is almost 19 now, and given that he has a job that pays well most people his age would think it strange that he hadn't moved out as soon as he could. Barry might still be in college but he loves living in a dorm, and he doesn't really get why Cisco wouldn't want an apartment on his own. Cisco doesn't know how to explain to him what it's like living with Harrison, how good it feels to have someone wait up for him, someone who cares about his day and wants to tell him about theirs and wants to make sure he's  _safe_. Barry's always had that at home, but for Cisco it's still pretty new, even after six years, and he's not sure he wants to give it up yet. He doesn't want to give Hartley up either though, so he tells himself that he'll still see Harrison every day and things won't change  _that_  much, and starts looking for an apartment.

The look on Harrison's face when Cisco announces his plan to move out is almost enough to make him give up the idea right then and there. Immediately he starts babbling about it being just an idea, and not all that important, and really kind of silly to spend the money when Harrison is fine with him living at home, and-

"Hush mijo," Harrison interrupts, holding up a hand to stem his torrent of excuses, "it's alright, you just surprised me. I thought you liked living here."

"I do!" Cisco tells him earnestly. "Really I do, it's just that, well, Hartley has a place of his own and Caitlin and Ronnie are about to get married and I just sort of feel like a little kid still living at home."

Harrison smiles understandingly, and everything inside Cisco that had wound itself in knots immediately relaxes.

"Of course Cisco," Harrison says kindly. "We'll find you a place."

He rejects the places Cisco had been looking at out of hand, and selects a rather large two-bedroom on a much more upscale part of town. Cisco wants to point out that even Hartley's place isn't this nice, but he doesn't want to bring up how intimately he's acquainted with the inside of Hartley's apartment. Harrison furnishes the place too, fills it with every luxury and lines every available surface with cutting edge STAR Labs electronics. Cisco jokes that if he plugs anything else into the walls the whole block will go dark, and Harrison just laughs and kisses his forehead fondly.

Hartley likes the place, or at least Cisco thinks he does. He certainly breaks it in with a great deal of enthusiasm, and by the end of his first night there's stains of either blood or something else in almost every room. They collapse into the over-sized bed, laughing and trading insults in Spanish, and sleep for the first time beside each other. Hartley steals the sheets and they kick each other more black and blue than they already are, and in the morning they burn breakfast because they're too distracted kissing each other.

Barry likes his new place too, and he comes over along with Caitlin and Ronnie for movie night every other Wednesday. Cisco wishes Barry would come work at STAR Labs when he graduates, but Barry's determined to become a forensic scientist for the CCPD. Iris West, the girl Barry's been in love with since they were kids, is currently in the police academy. Cisco understands his determination.

Work on the particle accelerator continues at a steady pace. Cisco and Hartley argue about literally every aspect of it, Caitlin exasperatedly mediates, and Ronnie joins in to declare a winner when an actual decision needs to be made. Cisco also has his own lab -- they all have their own labs -- and occasionally Harrison gives him other things to work on. He tinkers on his own projects, usually after hours or when a stubborn problem with the accelerator demands he do something else for a while until his mind can break out of the thought patterns it's worn itself into.

The one thing he won't make is weapons, and he makes that very clear to Harrison the first time a rough idea for some kind of kill-drone is put on his desk. He wants to save the world, not make it more dangerous, and Harrison is thankfully very understanding. He puts Cisco to work ironing out some stubborn problem with a new model for a wind turbine, and says no more about kill-drones.

Then, Hartley goes missing.

He doesn't turn up to work, and that alone is pretty unusual; work is Hartley's favorite thing about his life, barring his privilege to occasionally slap Cisco across the face and then get bent over the kitchen counter and spanked for it. He doesn't answer any of Cisco's phone calls either, so Cisco makes the uneasy assumption that Hartley is sick in bed and doesn't want Cisco to see him like this. He doesn't think any illness can keep Hartley down for more than a day though, so on the second day of Hartley's absence Cisco goes to ask Harrison what excuse he's given for missing work.

"Hartley Rathaway's employment at STAR Labs has been terminated," Harrison informs him tersely.

"What?" Cisco blurts in alarm. "Why?"

Harrison doesn't answer him right away, his face stoic and closed off. Cisco has never seen him wear that expression, and immediately he hates it. He has no idea what Harrison is thinking.

"He betrayed us," Harrison says simply, after several long moments of silence. "He betrayed me, he betrayed STAR Labs, and he betrayed us."

It's Cisco's turn to be silent for too long. He can't fathom how Hartley could have betrayed them, betrayed  _him._ What could have made him do a thing like that? What could he possibly have done, to make Harrison look so disappointed?

"Mijo," Harrison interrupts his thoughts, frowning in confusion. "I thought you'd be relieved, Cisco. I know you and Hartley didn't get along."

"We didn't," Cisco says reflexively. Now is not a good time to bring up his and Hartley's relationship.

That night Cisco goes to Hartley's apartment, lets himself in with the spare key he'd been given what felt like ages ago. All of his stuff is still there, and Cisco stays the night in his bed, hoping that he'll return for the things he left behind.

He never does.

Cisco throws himself into his work. Harrison continues to give him half-baked ideas that take shape into high-performance machines under his hands. He guts and rebuilds all of his equipment, making everything work faster, run smoother, operate more efficiently, and draws up new schematics until the entire infrastructure of STAR Labs has been "ciscoed" as Harrison so aptly puts it. Anything he involves another employee in gets patented by the Lab, but for the things he builds solely on his own skill Harrison puts the patents in Cisco's name. "Tax reasons," he claims, the same excuse he uses to put little bits of property in Cisco's name, until Cisco could be considered 'independently wealthy' by even the strictest definition and owns a considerable chunk of Central City and its outskirts.

Mostly though, he works on the particle accelerator. It's never been more important to him, this shared dream between himself and Harrison. Hartley isn't a part of it, not anymore, but it's still the key to the scientific breakthroughs that will change the world. When it's finished Harrison Wells will be the Man Who Saved Central City, and everyone will know just how amazing he is. Not a day goes by that Cisco can forget that.

The only person he tells about Hartley and their relationship is Barry. He feels a little guilty for not telling Cait and Ronnie, but they'll just be horrified at what was really going on, right under their noses. Barry though, Barry understands, and he listens to Cisco blubber about it over ice cream and old Halloween candy in Barry's cramped little dorm room.

"It's probably for the best," Barry tells him. "He wasn't good for you."

"I know-" Cisco starts, the familiar feeling of guilt welling up inside him, but Barry cuts him off.

"-and," Barry continues, "you deserve better."

It's what Cisco's been telling himself for months now, but it's only hearing it from Barry that makes him actually believe it.

Cisco is 20 when the particle accelerator goes live. All of STAR Labs erupts in triumph when the first crucial sixty seconds pass without incident, and the celebrations continue well into the night. Harrison and Cisco stay for most of it, drinking champagne and accepting congratulations, and when the party dies down Cisco returns to the house with Harrison rather than going home to his apartment. They fall asleep on the sofa with a Buster Keaton movie playing in the background, and Cisco's just beginning to drift off when he realizes he hasn't thought about Hartley all day. Not a perfect game, he supposes, but he's getting better. With Barry's and Harrison's help, he's getting better.

Then, Barry gets struck by lightning.

Cisco _freaks out_.

How could this happen, to Barry of all people? He's so kind, and so driven, and so  _careful_  because he knows that his job will be dangerous. He's literally just graduated from college, so close to his dream of working with Iris that he can taste it. Cisco can't take this loss, not so close on the heels of Hartley's disappearance, and he nearly collapses in relief when he hears that Barry's not dead. Just in a coma.

The equipment at Central City General Hospital is obviously inferior, and keeps insisting that Barry's heart is stopping despite the fact Barry is clearly fine whenever Cisco goes to visit him. (Cisco refuses to entertain the idea that this is wishful thinking.) He sets up his own little medical facility, in one of the small, abandoned labs Harrison put in his name, and recruits Caitlin and Ronnie to help him monitor Barry. He fills the lab with vastly superior equipment of his own design, which tells them some . . . interesting things.

Apparently, Barry's heart isn't stopping. It's just beating too fast to be picked up on normal EKG machines. Which shouldn't be physically possible for a human body, but Cisco is inclined to count his blessings, no matter how many times Cait's eye twitches.

Cisco doesn't tell Harrison. Over the years he's picked up a general idea that Harrison doesn't . . .  _approve_ , of Barry. He's never said anything, but every time Barry is around he radiates discomfort. Cisco can't tell what it is about Barry that rubs Harrison the wrong way, and he doesn't think that Harrison would actually  _do_  anything to stop Cisco from treating him, but he doesn't want to have to make anything resembling a choice between them. They're the two most important people in his life. He can't imagine losing either of them.

Barry's in a coma for nine months. During that time . . . things happen. The particle accelerator serves its purpose, unlocking the secrets of the universe and laying the finer details of reality bare before their eyes. It opens the door to more and more projects for Cisco to work on, mostly ideas from Harrison in response to some new breakthrough that he only trusts Cisco to bring to life. Cisco never disappoints him, and STAR Labs is more productive than ever. Harrison gains his well-deserved reputation as The Man Who Saved Central City.

Also, people with some rather . . . interesting abilities start to crop up.

Metahumans, Harrison dubs them. People with incredibly powers, powers that should be impossible: flight, teleportation, casting light or ice or fire around as easily as one might flick water off a wet hand. Cisco  _badly_ wants to study them, learn the ins and outs of their powers and potentially find the cause, but Harrison points out rather reasonably that his area of expertise is mechanical engineering, not bioengineering. It's a dangerous proposition, finding test subjects; many of them are volatile, and too many, far too many, have chosen lives of crime and destruction with their new found powers. The risk, in the end, is too high. At Harrison's insistence Cisco leaves the metahumans to the CCPD, and concentrates on the particle accelerator.

When Barry awakens, it is to a changed Central City. Nine months seems such a short time, but it's been a time of major upheaval. Technology has leaped forward thanks to the accelerator. New metahumans pop up to baffle and evade the police nearly once a week. Iris has a new boyfriend, who actually came to see Barry in his coma, of all infuriatingly good-hearted things.

Barry has changed too. His physical state has somehow improved over nine months of inactivity, resulting in a very nice set of washboard abs. He has a new determination to tell Iris his feelings, although this agenda is somewhat hindered by the boyfriend situation. Also, he has superpowers.

Logically, the only thing to do next is to don a heat and abrasive resistant, reinforced tri-polymer suit and take to the streets fighting crime.

Cisco sets him up a base of operations, in the same old lab he'd used for his make-shift coma ward. He revamps it from the foundation up, filling it with equipment he builds himself to study Barry's powers and monitor crime in Central City. He dubs it the Thundercloud, and while Caitlin says that makes it sound more like a clubhouse than anything, Barry and Ronnie are delighted with the name. Cait starts using it eventually.

It doesn't take long for The Flash to become a public icon. A symbol of hope. A Hero. It doesn't take long for the challenges posed by the various metahumans villains to start ramping up either, and soon enough Barry's having to get creative, experiment, push his powers to the limits of what they can do. Cisco's right there beside him, in his ear the whole time, with Caitlin monitoring his vitals and Ronnie gathering data for the  unique containment cell he's going to have to build this time.

The first person that Barry tells about his powers, besides Cisco obviously, is Iris. She starts taking the weird cases, the ones that are almost certainly metahuman-related, and once Barry's begun his on-the-job training as a CSI between the two of them they're generally able to track down the meta responsible. Stopping each one individually, though, isn't enough for Barry. He resolves to find the cause of the metahuman crisis, and when a reporter named Linda Park takes an interest in the rumors about the Flash, Barry tells her as much. Cisco swears to help, and means it, but he has a few other things on his mind.

Harrison doesn't turn a blind eye to the problems plaguing Central City. He graciously loans out both Cisco and Ronnie to the CCPD, to design and build a special wing in Iron Heights to accommodate the influx of metahuman prisoners. He and Cisco toss around the idea for some kind of metahuman-detection device, but ultimately deem the likelihood of such a thing to cause race riots too high to risk. Nearly any suggestion Cisco can think of for a way to help deal with the metahuman problem is met with encouragement and the promise of any resources he needs.

For some reason though, he doesn't like the Flash.

Cisco can't imagine why Harrison wouldn't love the Flash as much as the rest of Central City does, but every time someone brings up the Scarlet Speedster Harrison's lips purse in distaste. He insists the Flash is a dangerous renegade, doing more harm to the city than good with his vigilantism. He won't hear of offering any help to the Flash, and he seems tense, almost angry, whenever Cisco says anything good about him.

"Don't let the headlines fool you, Cisco," Harrison warns him firmly. "The Flash is a menace, and soon enough all of Central City will see that."

Cisco can't believe that though, can't believe they're putting anyone at risk by trying to get supervillains off the streets. They're  _helping_ , and everyone can see it. Why Harrison can't is a mystery.

The real menace is Zoom. An evil speedster clad all in black, Zoom starts terrorizing Central City roughly six months after Barry's debut as a costumed crusader. In response Barry resolves to train harder, push his limits, learn to go  _faster_ , and Cisco is happy to help. He builds a super-speed treadmill, a training room with an obstacle course, anything and everything they can think of to help Barry flex his abilities, but Zoom always seems to be one step ahead.

Cisco knows that sooner or later Harrison will start worrying about the amount of time he's clearly devoting to Team Flash, but he can't let that stop him.

***

Cisco is pulling away from him. Harrison can feel it.

He doesn't talk as much around Harrison anymore, and he seems reserved and distracted whenever they're together. He's spending more and more time away from STAR Labs, which had been like a second home to him since he started working there. He isn't at his apartment either, and he can't be going out to karaoke with Caitlin and Ronnie every night. He is, however, leaving his cell phone at home, meaning that Harrison's best means of tracking him is cut off. Almost like he's doing it deliberately.

Harrison has his suspicions. The fact that Cisco is enamored with the Flash is rather difficult to miss, and Harrison can't help but wonder if the fascination is more personal than ideological. The gadgets Flash uses to fight each week's new metahuman, the almost futuristic quality of the suit he wears, all of it smacks of Cisco's work. The fact that Cisco could keep such a secret from him . . . hurts. It hurts more than he can say, and he knows exactly who is responsible.

The Flash.

The Scarlet Speedster and his  _agenda_  are what's taking Cisco from him. This ridiculous hero and his determination to find the source of the metahumans, never thinking that perhaps that information is best left hidden, that perhaps it's in service of the greater good that he leave well enough alone. He could be Harrison's downfall, and with him the downfall of Central City, and just to make things more personal, more  _devastating_ , he's involved Harrison's  _child_  in his crusade.

He can't outright forbid Cisco from working with the Flash: Cisco is an adult now, not to be constrained by household rules, and trying would only let on that he knows Cisco is hiding things from him. Instead he tries to tighten his control on his boy in . . . other ways.

It's easy enough to make a few modifications to the computers in Cisco's lab. He restricts access to certain parts of the internet, making it difficult to find anyone with a theory as to the source of the metahumans and, more importantly, anyone with a positive word to say about the Flash. The laptop is trickier, but he still has a key to his boy's apartment and Cisco's taken to leaving  _that_  behind at home as well. Definitely trying to avoid being tracked.

Not for the first time Harrison wonders if Cisco already suspects him, but dismisses the thought immediately. Cisco loves him. He'd never suspect Harrison of any wrongdoing. Never.

***

Cisco is 22 when his relationship with Hartley Rathaway comes back to haunt him.

Linda tells Barry that a reporter that works at her newspaper, Mason Bridges, has disappeared. He was working on a story attempting to draw interest to Hartley's disappearance. Bridges had a theory: he believed that Hartley had found some flaw in the design of the particle accelerator that Harrison hadn't wanted brought to light. Bridges thought Harrison had killed Hartley.

It is, of course, absurd. There's nothing wrong with the particle accelerator. Harrison had been exceedingly fond of Hartley, and deeply wounded by his betrayal. He would never do a thing like this.

And yet, Mason Bridges is missing. Along with his story.

There's not much Cisco can do, when Iris tells him about it. He won't,  _can't_ , share her suspicions about Harrison, but try as he might he can't convince her to give them up either. He can't exactly verify Harrison's alibi: there  _is_  no alibi, because no one knows when or where the supposed murders took place, so there's been no opportunity for Harrison to claim that he was doing something else. Cisco tells Iris truthfully that he has no idea what happened to Hartley, but at her insistence he does agree to take a look at the particle accelerator, despite the fact that he knows it inside and out.

There is, however, one thing he can do. Iris doesn't ask him, but that's only because he never told her the specific detail that niggles at him hours after he's left their coffee not-date at Jitters. It's stupid. There's a reason he never bothered to ask at the time. It means nothing.

"How did Hartley betray us?" Cisco asks Harrison, at the next movie night at the Wells Mansion.

Harrison pauses, looking at Cisco in some confusion, then resumes chewing his popcorn thoughtfully. "What brought this on?" he asks curiously.

Cisco swallows, looking around the enormous living room so as not to have to look at Harrison. On nights like these it seems almost cruel to have left Harrison in this big empty house, but it would be ridiculous to move back in now.

"Just something I've been thinking about lately," he says evasively. "You mentioned, before, that you fired him because he betrayed us. What did he do?"

There's a few moments of silence as Harrison eyes him warily. Cisco tries to look innocent, hoping that Harrison can't see through the question. Not for the first time he remembers that he never told Harrison about his relationship with Hartley, and feels guiltier than ever.

Whatever Harrison is looking for in Cisco's face, he apparently finds it. "Hartley Rathaway accepted a job offer at Mercury Labs," he explains, voice somewhat thin and fragile, and Cisco can recognize the sound of Harrison trying to hide his pain. "He was planning to take notes on the work he did, in my lab, with your help, on  _our_  accelerator, and sell them to Christina McGee."

Cisco looks down, needing to take in this information without Harrison's calm blue eyes boring into his. Hartley had  _loved_  STAR Labs. He'd respected Harrison more than anyone else. He hadn't wanted money, had never been interesting in more than he needed to maintain himself; what he'd wanted was to help change the world. This makes  _no sense_  with what he knows about Hartley, but it does make sense if . . .

If Harrison is lying.

"I can see this is difficult for you to take," Harrison says gently, pulling Cisco out of his contemplation. "I always thought you and Hartley didn't get along. Perhaps I was mistaken? Was there . . . something there?"

"No," Cisco replies truthfully. He and Hartley hadn't gotten along, even when they'd been sleeping together. "You weren't."

Harrison nods knowingly. "I see," he replies placidly. "It is a staggering betrayal in itself. I myself was . . . shocked, to say the least."

The next day Cisco calls and asks Iris to see if Hartley accepted a job at Mercury Labs. He didn't, he wasn't even offered one, and Cisco feels like his world is crumbling. This can't be right. There has to be another explanation. Dr. McGee might be lying. If she was asking Hartley to steal information she wouldn't want his employment to go on record until everything was in place. She certainly wouldn't want to tell the police about it, not after Hartley turned up dead. (Missing, he tells himself, Hartley's still missing, they haven't found a body yet so he's  _missing_.)

It's enough, however, for Iris's boss to consent to her reopening the case. She doesn't approach Harrison with her suspicions, not yet, and for that Cisco is grateful. He can't help but feel like he himself has betrayed Harrison, just by talking to her about this. It makes him sick, to think he acted as a spy against his foster father, his  _savior_ , the man who's done more for him than anyone.

To alleviate that guilt Cisco throws himself into his work. He tries to spend less of his time with Team Flash and more time in STAR Labs, working on project after project at Harrison's request. Their usual model is for Harrison to give him a vague idea in the morning and Cisco to spend the day working on it. Most of the time he has a badly unpolished but basically working prototype, just to give Harrison an idea of how his suggestion is taking shape, by close of business. Barring that Cisco will present him with notes, schematics, whatever he's been working on for Harrison to evaluate, and in return he gets either a green light to start building it or the promise of other projects to occupy himself with soon.

It's for this reason that, when Harrison brings up an idea for a cooling generator capable of producing temperatures as low as Absolute Zero, Cisco thinks nothing of it. It's an interesting idea, and Cisco's mind is spinning off in four different directions before Harrison is even finished talking. He spends the day working on a schematic, and when Harrison tells him to continue he devotes the rest of the week to his prototype. Given the time he's put into it he makes it a bit more fine-tuned than most, and he's proud to have something closer to a final product to show for his effort at the end of the week.

Harrison is ecstatic about it. Cisco glows with pride.

He doesn't give the Absolute Zero Generator any more thought for next week or two. Things settle down with him and Harrison, their bond stabilizing once more over their shared passion for engineering. Working together with Harrison, taking his ideas and making them real, seeing his joy in Cisco's creations, has always made Cisco feel calm, centered, loved. He relaxes into working more with Barry again, not that he'd really been absent, and dealing with each new metahuman regains some its "grand adventure" quality.

It's when the bank robberies start that things change. They're a little odd, and the team suspects a metahuman, but while Barry and Iris look for clues there's not a lot Cisco can do to help, so he returns to STAR Labs. He's working on something for Harrison, at a comfortable intermittent stage between prototype and finished product. The TV in his lab is on, turned to a news channel just to give him some background noise while he works.

It takes him a minute to realize the reporter is talking about something he calls a Cold Gun, but when that registers Cisco's attention is instantly on the TV. There's an eyewitness video taken with someone's phone playing, of a man in a navy parka shooting someone with a blast of cold energy so intense that the person freezes solid. The gun's a bit hastily constructed; the inner workings can be seen from the outside.

That's . . . that's his Absolute Zero Generator.

Cisco feels sick.

He feels sicker still when the video feed switches to a news helicopter, showing the culprit out on the street . . . fighting the Flash. Barry dodges and weaves, but Cisco designed the generator for that gun and it can go forever. It's only a matter of time before Barry gets hit in the chest with a blast of concentrated cold, so intense and so powerful that it knocks him off his feet. Cisco's heart nearly stops as Barry lays motionless on the ground for a few agonizing moments, but eventually he struggles to his feet and takes off running. He barely makes it out alive.

There's only one thing left to do, now, so Cisco begins work immediately. He has it basically finished in an hour and spends another hour fine-tuning it, then clocks out earlier than he ever has in the history of his employment at STAR Labs and heads to the Thundercloud. Barry and Caitlin are there, Barry lying on the hospital bed while Cait buzzes agitatedly around him like an angry bumble bee. Both of them are wondering what hit him, and how a criminal like Leonard Snart could have gotten ahold of tech that advanced.

"I have a theory," Cisco chokes out, catching both their attention.

"What's wrong?" Barry demands upon seeing the look on Cisco's face.

Cisco avoids the question. "I made you this," he says instead, holding up the new and improved Flash suit. "It has a heating element, to make sure that if Captain Cold ever blasts you again there's something Caitlin can do about it from here. It should be enough to counteract the Cold Gun without injuring you."

Cait and Barry are frowning at him though; both of them know him well enough to know he wouldn't be nearly in tears over something like this.

"What happened?" Cait asks gently, coming to stand in front of him.

Cisco can't meet her eye. "Sometimes he just . . . asks me to build things," he explains, knowing Cait doesn't need him to say who 'he' is. "I don't really ask questions, I . . . never needed to. I should. I should have."

"Cisco?" Barry asks in worried alarm, and the tears finally fall down Cisco's face because he doesn't deserve Barry's concern.

He bows his head, unable to look at either of them. "He didn't tell me what he wanted it for," he tries desperately, because even if he doesn't deserve their forgiveness he at least wants him to know he'd never do this on purpose. "I'm sorry. He didn't tell me-"

Instantly Barry is in front of him, and Cisco squeaks as he's pulled sharply into a tight hug. "Cisco," Barry says into his hair, "no, no. It's not your fault."

"Wait," Caitlin catches on, " _you_  built the Cold Gun?"

"Not the gun," Cisco replies hurriedly, pulling away from Barry to face her, "just the generator. Harrison . . . Dr. Wells, asked me to."

Caitlin pauses, staring at him worriedly. She knows how much those words cost him. "It could have been stolen," she suggests quietly. "He might not have-"

"No," Cisco cuts her off, voice soft. He can't say this too loudly, not yet. "He keeps everything I build in a vault, and only he has the codes. I designed it. No one broke in."

By some perverse coincidence, that's when Barry's phone rings. It's Iris's ringtone, so at Cisco's nod Barry answers it.

"We found Hartley Rathaway's body," she says simply.

Cisco has to sit down.

At Barry's insistence Cisco goes home to rest. He can't rest though, lying in bed and thinking about Harrison. How could he have done a thing like this? He's always been so kind. He helped Iron Heights contain the metahuman criminals. He refused to build detection devices because he knew they would likely result in violence, frightened people attacking metas and metas defending themselves until all-out war broke loose. He  _cares_  about Central City.

But he hates the Flash.

He lied to Cisco. He went back on his promise, using Cisco to build a weapon. He's responsible for Hartley's murder, and the murder of Mason Bridges. If Hartley and Bridges were right, as it seems very likely they were, the particle accelerator may be what's caused all the pandemonium in Central City the last two years.

And if he had done this, what else had he done? How much information had he buried? Cisco recalls trying to look for theories, other people who had ideas about where the metahumans might have come from, and finding absolutely nothing. Was that why he hated the Flash? Because Barry was looking for the source of the metas? How many people had he silenced? Had he really killed Hartley over a thing like this?

Cisco plays back the conversation he'd had with Harrison, when he'd asked about Hartley and Harrison had lied, in his mind.  _I always thought you and Hartley didn't get along,_ he'd said. _Perhaps I was mistaken? Was there . . . something there?_ Cisco hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but suddenly that sounded . . . odd. Why would Harrison assume that there had been  _something_  between him and Hartley? Their relationship hadn't exactly been lovey-dovey at the best of times. At work they'd been careful. The only placed they'd ever been remotely affectionate with each other was-

A horrible thought strikes Cisco. His mind, his heart rather, instantly rebels at the idea, but the more it swirls around in his brain the more sense it makes. It's easy enough to find out though, too easy to avoid, and before long he's getting out of bed to check.

He starts with his blender. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realizes that he's avoiding this; if he doesn't find anything it'll be easy to declare the whole thing ridiculous even though a kitchen appliance isn't exactly the first place one would hide something like this. He takes it apart piece by piece, doing an inventory of things that he knows  _should_  be there, poking around for things that shouldn't.

He actually, finally, throws up when he finds it. Of all the times he's felt sick or nauseous over guilt or betrayal,  _this_  tiny little device is what makes him finally bend over the sink and lose his lunch. The power button on the blender, he finds, is semi-transparent, and behind it is a hidden camera. He doesn't bother to check for a microphone, just throws the whole thing out the window into the dumpster in the alley below. The same fate befalls the rest of his appliances, and then the other electronics. A camera like this would need a power sources to run without regular maintenance, so Cisco goes through the whole apartment and rips every plug out of the walls. Everything goes out the window, all the gifts Harrison gave him, all the shiny toys that seemed like love but were really lies.

He forces the sense of betrayal to the back of his mind. There are more important things for him to focus on.

The Cortex is a risky place to be doing research on a dead man, especially someone Harrison Wells might have murdered with his own two hands, but this is the only place he can think of that would never allow restrictions on the computers. He'd asked Felicity Smoak (they'd met so many interesting new people on that little adventure with the Starling City Arrow) to remotely do a sweep of his top-of-the-line, STAR Labs-made laptop, and she'd come back with the very answer he'd feared. According to the computer Harrison had _insisted_ he use, about half of STAR Labs' encrypted files and two-thirds of the _internet_ just don't exist. He's going to have to check all the computers in the Thundercloud too, but he doesn't have time to figure out if that place has been compromised. He needs to know now.

Harrison would have wanted to destroy these files, but Hartley was a crafty little bitch and Cisco knew him better than anyone. He had too many important projects to completely delete his work from the servers, and Cisco knows exactly where to look to find the breadcrumbs buried in his notes.

When he finds what he's looking for, Cisco sits back in his chair with a deep, shuddering breath. Hartley Rathaway had started independently assessing the structural integrity of the particle accelerator. He'd found inconsistencies in Dr. Wells' calculations, so he started running some of his own. He'd found issues, instabilities, and had realized that if the accelerator went live there was a serious risk to Central City.

And then he'd ended up dead.

Cisco doesn't get much time to muse on this before his reverie is broken by the sound of slow, measured clapping behind him. He spins in his chair to find Harrison standing in the doorway, smiling in delight with his eyes fixed on Cisco's face.

"You're incredibly clever, Cisco," he says, a note of pride in his voice. "I've always said so."

"Funny," Cisco replies, getting shakily up from his chair, "you seem to have been fooling me for a long time."

Harrison dismisses this with a wave of his hand. "There was no reason to bore you with little management details," he says casually. "I wanted you to focus your energies on more important things."

"So, bugging my apartment," Cisco begins, voice trembling with suppressed rage, "spying on me, restricting my access to information and resources, all of that was just little management details?"

"It's only natural for a parent to want to keep an eye on their child," Harrison laughs,  _laughs_.

"Microphones and cameras in my apartment aren't 'keeping an eye' on me," Cisco bites out.

Harrison shrugs. "I'm a parent of more means than most," he explains, still smiling fondly at Cisco. "I have a lot of resources at my disposal, any of which I would have shared with you. You know you only have to ask, Cisco."

"You cut me off!" Cisco snaps. "You tried to isolate me! You controlled what information I could get at, what people I could connect with . . .  _Dios_ , I haven't heard from my brother in years, is this why?"

"You don't need him," Harrison says gently, and that's as good of an answer as anything. "You don't need any of them. Do you think, after what they did to you, how they  _treated_  you, I would give them another chance to take advantage of you?"

"Like you did?" Cisco shouts, stepping forward just a little in his anger. "You took something I made to help people-"

"The Absolute Zero Generator will help people," Harrison cuts him off, and he sounds absurdly reassuring under the circumstances, every bit the calm and patient mentor Cisco knows. "As will the Cold Gun."

Cisco hadn't expected Harrison to admit it so blatantly. He wishes he _hadn't_  admitted it, but Cisco had known the truth the moment he'd seen Leonard Snart on the news. It hurts, though, to be told flat out that Harrison has so little regard for what he wants. He knows how Cisco feels about weapons. He just didn't care.

Cisco wants to retch, but there's nothing left in his stomach. Instead he says, "You killed Hartley Rathaway."

Harrison shakes his head sadly. “I couldn’t let him say anything, do anything, that would jeopardize this,” he gestures expansively to the Cortex around them, the miles of underground pipeline that he and Cisco and so many other scientists had worked years to create. “This was Tess’s dream. This is the last thing we dreamed up together before she died.”

Cisco stares at him, thinking of all the meta-humans that he’s helped the Flash face over the last year, of Linda’s worry over Mason Bridge’s disappearance, of Barry lying frozen and half-alive in the street and the pictures Iris had sent from her phone of Hartley's body in its shallow grave. “She wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“You didn’t know her like I did, Cisco.” Harrison starts, soft and sure and with just a touch of scolding that Cisco had grown used to over the last decade. “You don’t know what she would have wanted.”

“People are dead, Wells-”

“Oh, it’s Wells now?” Harrison asks, with a look of forced humor that doesn't reach his eyes. Cisco sees the olive branch that he’s holding out. Sees the offer to stop this argument before it goes too far, but he knows that this,  _this_ , has been a long time coming.

“-and you turned my tech into a weapon! You gave it to a criminal, who used it to hurt my friend!” he nearly chokes on the words and Harrison doesn’t even have the grace to look ashamed about it. 

“Everything I’ve done since the Flash came into our lives has been to protect you, Cisco.” It’s said so earnestly that he almost gives in, because beyond everything else, Harrison Wells is as close to a real father as Cisco has ever gotten, and there’s still a part of him that finds it hard to see the dark sides of him for what they are. 

But that doesn’t mean that the dark sides stop existing just because he wants them to.

“The Flash isn't the one I need protecting from,” Cisco tells him coldly, and leaves before he has to watch Harrison’s face fall, brushing past him on his way out of the cortex and toward his lab. There's only one way forward now. He knows what he has to do.

***

Cisco is gone.

Cisco is  _gone_.

Harrison doesn't know how it's possible. He'd been  _right there_ , in STAR Labs, just last night. Now he's nowhere, nowhere that Harrison can find him, and it makes his heart clench painfully in fear.

He'd known he was in trouble when Cisco discovered the bugs. He hadn't been under the impression that his boy would take kindly to being monitored, but watching him throw everything Harrison had given him for his apartment -- the cutting edge electronics, the high-performance appliances, anything and everything that could be plugged into a power outlet -- out of a window on CCTV still hadn't been pleasant. When all those monitors had gone dark he'd switched to watching the STAR Labs security cameras, and sure enough it didn't take long before Cisco was in the Cortex, using those computers to access files his protected laptop and the computers in his lab wouldn't have let him see.

The ensuing conversation had not gone well. Cisco was hurt, angry; it was understandable. The Flash's influence made him volatile, but Harrison had done his best to soothe his child's temper. He'd assumed, when Cisco stormed off, that he merely needed time to calm down.

But now he's  _gone_.

His apartment's been cleared out; not just the STAR Labs electronics, but clothes, books, everything. His lab is empty too: research, schematics, prototypes of various projects and the blueprints for the Absolute Zero Generator are all missing. His phone's been dumped, by the train station at the direct line to Starling City. All of the GPS enabled devices Harrison had used to track him are nonoperational.

He's  _gone_.

If  _only_ Harrison could go back to last night and do it again. Go through that conversation differently, knowing then what he knows now. He wouldn't let Cisco walk away. He'd hold his boy close, whisper how dear he was, how much he was loved, into his hair until Cisco stopped fighting him. Cisco would see reason. Harrison would  _make_ him.

The only way to do that now, though, is to hold a press conference, so that's exactly what he does. The police need 24 hours to declare him a missing person, but Harrison knows he doesn't have that kind of time; he can't let another moment pass while Cisco might be hearing all kinds of lies about him. He knows Cisco hasn't left Central City, this is the Flash's doing and he has too firm a hold on Cisco for him to just up and leave. Leave him like he left his father, his family, his  _only_  family.

Harrison refuses to entertain the idea that he isn't Cisco's only family.

He follows the model the police recommend for families of kidnapped children giving statements to the press. He can't let on that Cisco has most likely left on his own; he's not a runaway if he's an adult, and the public will be less sympathetic, less likely to come forward with information. He pretends to think Cisco's been taken, and really he has, in a way. He might have left voluntarily, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been  _taken_  from Harrison. By the Flash.

"If you have any information whatsoever, please contact me," he tells the cameras, and with those words puts all of Central City on the lookout for his boy. By the end of the day Cisco will have nowhere to hide.

"Do you have any words for the kidnappers?" one sympathetic reporter asks, a look of grim concern on his face.

Harrison has  _many_  words for the man who took his boy from him, very few of them fit for public television. "If you have him," he says instead, putting a hitch in his voice that he knows Cisco will hear, that he'll  _react to_ , "please, I beg you, just let him go. He's done so much for Central City. He's never hurt a fly. This City will be a darker place if anything happens to him."

Then he looks down, clenching his fist on the corner of the podium, concentrating on the last time he saw Cisco in order to bring tears to his eyes. "Please," he says in a choked whisper, "I would be lost without him. He's  _my whole world_."

Then he swallows hard, swallows his tears, and thinks of the Flash.

"And I would do anything," he continues, voice hardening until he knows that the threat is implicit in his words, " _anything_ , to get him back."

***

Watching his foster father, his savior, the man who's done more for him than anyone and who's betrayed him more deeply than he thought possible, almost break down crying on the news isn't easy for Cisco. He knows what Harrison's doing: there's no way he thinks Cisco's actually been kidnapped, he just wants to make him feel guilty. Guilty for leaving. Guilty for siding with the Flash. Guilty for refusing to buy his crap for the first time.

He asks Oliver for advice and under his instruction starts setting up shell companies through which he can funnel his money from the patents that are in his name. Harrison has no claim on those, and he won't be able to use them to track him or cut him off from his income, as long as Cisco is careful. He foresees a long stretch of unemployment in his future.

"You don't have to do this," Barry tells him as Cisco sets up a little space for himself to sleep in the Thundercloud.

"I really do," Cisco replies. He won't let Barry take on Harrison Wells by himself. Barry's going to need help.

Apparently Harrison knows that Caitlin and Ronnie won't tell him anything, because both of them insist he's not even at STAR Labs the next day. They bring Cisco what he needs, just a few things. It's not like he can go outside, what with all of Central City looking for him.

"This will blow over eventually," Cait tells him gently.

Cisco shakes his head. "Not until we take Wells down," he says grimly. He tries to force himself to say 'Wells' in his own mind, but he thinks that will take a little longer.

Their next move isn't exactly clear, and while Iris and Barry compile their case there isn't much for the rest of them to do. Cisco continues to be the voice in the earpiece for the Flash, Caitlin and Ronnie keep playing medic and jailer respectively, but mostly they're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The other shoe, as it turns out, is Harrison Wells with a Cold Gun.

'Captain Cold' hasn't made another appearance, though they've all been on the lookout for him. Barry isn't worried; he trusts Cisco's tech, and Cisco is grateful for that. After everything it's good to know that he still has Barry's trust.

That trust feels a little less deserved, however, when Harrison corners him. Cisco has to wonder if he paid off that purse snatcher, or indeed if the whole thing was a set-up, when Barry's vitals plummet and Caitlin's machines start reading an extreme drop in temperature. The location is a little too conveniently isolated. It's not like Harrison's displayed misgivings about working with criminals.

"Where is he?" Harrison asks, and Cisco doesn't need to see what's happening to know that he's leveled the gun at Barry's chest.

The suit, however, is doing its work, and within moments Barry's back on his feet, his vitals stable again. "Who?" he asks, although he knows that perfectly well.

Having never seen it firsthand Cisco doesn't actually know  _what_  the Cold Gun sounds like when someone is very pointedly powering it up, but he'll bet it sounds an awful lot like the noise that just came through Barry's headset.

"My son," Harrison growls, and Cisco is a bit ashamed of the little thrill that sends through him. Even after everything, Harrison still thinks of him as a son.

"He doesn't want to talk to you," Barry says, not quite truthfully. There are many things Cisco would like to talk about with Harrison, but he doesn't have it in him. Not yet.

"Was that his decision or yours?" Harrison challenges.

"Apparently it was your decision, Dr. Wells," Barry shoots back. "You're the one who was listening in on conversations you weren't meant to hear. Is it any wonder he doesn't have anything left to say to you?"

"Let him tell me that," Harrison demands. "Let him look his father in the eye and explain the reason why he left the person who cares about him most in the world."

Cisco's grateful that it's Barry who has to answer, because he has no idea what to say to that. Barry, thankfully, does.

"The reason, Dr. Wells?" Barry asks sarcastically. "You're holding the reason. You betrayed his trust."

"I  _protected_  him," Harrison insists furiously.

"You used him!" Barry corrects, and there's more anger in his voice than Cisco has ever heard from him. "Like you used all of us! Everyone in Central City!"

"I have  _saved_  Central City," Harrison laughs, mirthless and incredulous.

"No you haven't," Barry says, "but you could."

"Barry," Cisco hisses into his earpiece, "what are you doing?"

Barry can't answer him without giving away that they're in contact though, so he forges on as though Cisco hadn't spoken. "You lost Cisco because you've done bad things," Barry explains firmly, " _evil_  things. He thought you were a hero and you proved him wrong."

"Is that what you've been telling him?" Harrison snarls. "What you've convinced him?"

"I'm not the one who's been lying to him," Barry counters.

That's  _definitely_  the sound of the Cold Gun being fired, but the monitors in the suit don't register a temperature drop, so apparently Harrison missed.

"That's not going to get you back what you've lost," Barry tells him at a shout. "If you want to be Cisco's hero again why don't you point that gun at someone who actually means this city harm?"

Cisco really hopes that's the sound of the Cold Gun powering down. It sounds vaguely like the generator being deactivated, so he thinks the odds are good. "I'm listening," says Harrison impatiently.

"Help me stop Zoom," Barry offers. "Help me eliminate the biggest threat to this city, the one  _you_  created, and maybe you can actually be the person Cisco thought you were."

It's a good plan, Cisco has to concede. Even with the money from the patents and his own expertise, he still hasn't managed to build something that can stop Zoom. Harrison though, Harrison is more brilliant that Cisco will ever be. If anyone can build a trap for a speed demon from hell, it's him.

"If I do," Harrison says slowly, "you'll let him go?"

"Again with the blaming me," Barry replies in annoyance. "You went on the news and put the whole city on alert. He can't even go outside without worrying someone's going to call the cops. Or worse, you. I've literally been bringing him food for weeks, that's how afraid he is of you."

"I need to know where he is, I need to know he's safe," Harrison says, low and angry. "If I do this for you, I want to see him."

"I can't promise that," Barry says, and something in Cisco's gut untwists. He hadn't realized how much it felt like he'd have to do this, even if he didn't want to. "That's Cisco's decision, not mine and not yours. But . . ." Barry trails off, and Cisco can hear him swallow through the mike. "You don't know . . . you didn't see how much it broke him, when he realized what you'd done. He denied it to the very end. He defended you. He doesn't want this wall between the two of you any more than you do. If you do this, if you _prove_  that you really want to change . . . you don't know what it will mean to him."

Cisco feels Ronnie's hand on his arm, and he jerks back from the console in surprise. Ronnie's looking down at him sympathetically, and sitting behind him Cait looks worried. They both know, just like Barry knows, how much his relationship with Harrison meant to him. Clearly it meant an equal amount to Harrison. It's not like Cisco hadn't  _known_  that Harrison cared about him, but seeing Harrison go to such lengths for him, to get him back, it just brings everything bubbling back up.

That doesn't change what needs to happen though, and just like the last time he'd heard Harrison's voice, he know what needs to happen next.

Cisco turns back to the microphone on Barry's headset. "Tell him I'll do it."

"Are you sure?" Barry hisses, low enough that Harrison might not be able to hear it, depending on how close he is.

"I'm sure," Cisco says, trying to sound braver than he feels. "Make the deal."

There's a pause, then Barry says, "Sounds like you've got yourself a deal Dr. Wells. Cisco says he'll take your terms."

"Cisco?!" Harrison demands, and his voice is painful to hear, panicked and desperate and broken. "Mijo, can you hear me-"

Cisco shuts off the sound feed. He pushes back his chair and gets up hurriedly, letting Ronnie take his place. He agreed to see Harrison, to talk to him, but he's not ready yet. He's nowhere near ready, even to hear his voice, and he scrambles to get out into the hallway before Caitlin turns Barry's headset back on. He doesn't know how he can do this.

He's going to have to figure it out.

***

When he'd realized that Cisco was listening to his conversation with the Flash, Harrison's heart had leaped into his throat. He didn't want his boy to hear him like that, the way he spoke to an enemy, to the person who'd taken his child from him. What made it worse was that the Flash clearly still had his claws in Cisco, was whispering lies into his ears to make him distrust the one person he should rely upon.

He'd only gotten through the last few weeks by focusing on Cisco. His boy, his  _child_ , who was lost and almost certainly in pain, reeling from a confusing mix of emotions brought on by the Flash's influence. Harrison isn't ignorant of his own failings, but he would never burden Cisco with those sins; that the Flash is making him pay for what Harrison has done makes Harrison's blood boil.

He should have never allowed Cisco that apartment. Never turned a blind eye to his unchecked excursions, never let him pull away. He should have insisted Cisco move back in for his safety, should have worked harder to impress upon him the dangers posed by the Flash, should have-

Well, what he  _should_  have done doesn't matter now. It's what he's  _going_  to do that counts.

He's  _going_  to get his son back. Nothing is going to prevent that: not the Flash, not Zoom and certainly not Cisco himself. Cisco is  _not_  himself, right now. His mind has been poisoned. All Harrison needs to do is get him back, get him  _alone_ , away from the Flash's influence and then he'll see. He'll come around. Everything will be alright again.

Soon enough Cisco will be home, he tells himself. Soon enough his boy will be safe, and then he can begin to repair the damage Flash has done. He'll make Cisco understand that everything he's done has been for the sake of their dream. He'll soothe any fears or insecurities, any sense of guilt or shame the Flash may have made him feel. He'll hold his child close until Cisco remembers that Harrison loves him more than anyone else ever could. All Harrison has to do is find him.

He already knows Cisco is holed up somewhere, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Harrison's wracked his brains for any means he might have of tracking his child, but Cisco had been thorough; there's no way to find where he's been hiding. He can only keep hiding, though, as long as he has the Flash's help.

All he needs to do, then, is get rid of the Flash.

***

None of Team Flash trust Harrison's deal. He's double-crossed too many would-be allies for them to be perfectly comfortable letting him in on their plans, but unfortunately it's his technology that they need to stop Zoom. He says he'll build a trap of some kind, a means to capture and contain him until he can be transferred to a more permanent holding cell in Iron Heights. Of course, he wants to do it in the basement of STAR Labs, a setting that he can control. Cisco has his misgivings, but it's not like they can really object.

They can, however, put some contingencies in place.

The tricky part of the plan is luring Zoom into STAR Labs without letting him get suspicious. They have no bait except Barry, and he's never led Zoom on a chase anywhere but in the streets. There's also the fact that they have no idea when or where Zoom will attack, meaning that they all have to be ready at any given moment.

"It would be easier to coordinate if we were based here," Harrison says pointedly, and Cisco can practically  _hear_  his glare through the earpiece. "You could set up your base of operations in the Cortex; we could all work together."

"Let's see how this one goes," Barry replies dryly.

It's a few agonizing weeks of waiting before anything happens, and most of that is spent on just building the damn thing. Harrison refuses to pull anyone away from their work in STAR Labs, even though Cisco knows Ronnie's been dropping subtle hints that he would help, so it's slow going.

"It would go faster if I had Cisco to-"

"Give it a rest Wells," Barry cuts him off.

Then, roughly a week after the completion of the Trap, Harrison calls Barry.

"He's here," Harrison says breathlessly, the speaker making it clearly audible to the entire control room in the Thundercloud, "it's Zoom he's loose in the facility-" and before he can finish Barry's off like a shot, none of them stopping to wonder what the hell Zoom would be doing in STAR Labs.

So it really shouldn't be a surprise when Zoom isn't in STAR Labs.

"You lied to us!" Barry yells from inside the Trap, a monstrosity of fluctuating energy not unlike a hamster ball.

"After all the times you accused me of lying I thought you'd be a little less surprised," Harrison says, smiling in amusement. He stands in front of Barry, hands on his hips with the ends of his coat flung back as he surveys the trapped speedster.

"How does this even help you?" Barry demands. "How will you find Cisco without me? He'll never want to see you if you kill me."

"Do  _not_  say that about my son," Harrison snaps. "He's not as judgmental as you are, and he's certainly a great deal more forgiving. He would  _never_  turn his back on me, not for good."

"That doesn't help you find him," Barry insists.

"Oh but it does!" Harrison laughs. "He can't go outside without being spotted, without his presence being known, which is why, as you said, you've been bringing him supplies. Without that, though, he'll have to come out of hiding. All of Central City is on alert; if Cisco ventures out into the open, someone will see. And then I'll find him, and bring him home."

"Why should he want to go with you?" Barry asks incredulously. "You're a murderer! Not just me, but Hartley Rathaway and Mason Bridges, and who knows how many other people."

"Just them," Harrison informs him placidly. "I was protecting us, protecting our dream. He'll understand, without you there to turn him against me."

"You did that yourself," Barry argues. "He doesn't need me to tell him that killing people to cover up the fact that your particle accelerator created the metahumans by leaking dark matter all over Central City is wrong."

"It's his accelerator as much as mine," Harrison shoots back. "He wanted it just as much as I did. Hartley Rathaway took advantage of him, and Mason Bridges was a stranger; I'm his  _father_. Cisco's . . . obstinance, won't hold up when I remind him of that."

"You take no responsibility for the wreckage your mistakes have caused," Barry accuses venomously. "Why couldn't you have just helped me stop Zoom?"

"Because it's  _not_  my responsibility," Harrison retorts. "My responsibility is to my son, to protect him and keep him from harm, and I will kill _anyone_  who gets in the way of that. You know I already have."

Then, Barry smiles. Harrison frowns at him curiously, and Barry raises a hand to his ear to tap the earpiece hidden beneath his mask.

"Did you get all that Cisco?" he asks, grinning broadly.

"Every word," Cisco replies, his voice echoing off the walls of the bunker, through the speaker he'd installed along with the cameras and microphones. "The whole thing's on tape, en route to the CCPD as we speak."

Harrison spins around, looking for the source of his voice in horror. "Cisco?" he calls, sounding panicked. "Cisco, mi cielo, don't listen to him! Come back, we can talk about this-"

"Goodbye Dr. Wells," Cisco cuts him off, and with the touch of a button he deactivates the Trap around Barry.

Cisco cuts the sound before he has to hear any more of Wells' excuses, but he can still hear the ringing "No!" in Barry's earpiece as the Flash speeds out of STAR Labs.

***

"Where will you go?" Barry asks as he watches Cisco pack his bag.

"Starling City, at least at first," Cisco tells him, stowing his laptop neatly among the clothes. He'd had Barry retrieve the one he'd built, his first one, from Wells' house. It needed some adjustments, but it still feels like an old friend.

"Oliver's lucky," Barry laughs a little. "Are you going to officially join his team, or . . ?"

"I don't think there's any such thing as 'official' when we're talking about vigilantes," Cisco snorts, "but I am gonna build him some tech. Something to keep me busy while I set up my own lab. Strictly underground of course."

"Of course," Barry says in mock seriousness. "I mean, it's not like you can really spend most of your time building gadgets for vigilantes and superheroes in a lab that's above ground level."

"Nope," Cisco replies in the same tone, "the atmosphere's just all wrong."

Neither of them want to mention that Cisco will still have to lay low. Dr. Harrison Wells, recently-childless widower and unscrupulous inventor extraordinaire, has managed to weasel out of criminal charges despite the fact that the police have a taped confession showing him to be the murderer of Mason Bridges and Hartley Rathaway. He's lost a not-inconsiderable but none the less irrelevant chunk of his fortune to fines and legal fees, but more importantly his reputation is in tatters. Still, there are those who remain loyal to him, and those who are more interested in the very nice reward he's offering for any information on his estranged child than loyalty of any kind.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Barry asks, in all seriousness. "We  _can_  protect you. You don't have to spend the rest of your life running from him."

"I'm not running," Cisco tells him. It's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false either. "I need to figure out who I am away from him, away from everything he and I built together. Central City . . . we may as well have laid the foundation ourselves. His influence is  _everywhere_  and I . . . I need to go somewhere he's never touched."

Barry nods his understanding.

Cisco does go to Starling City. He rebuilds the Arrow Cave, makes a bunch of trick arrows, and redesigns a sonic device for the Black Canary, which she can call whatever she wants but the official name for which is the Canary Cry. He geeks out over Felicity's new position as CEO of Palmer Tech, but he declines to take a job there. He goes out drinking with Thea and they commiserate about their terrible fathers, but her stories are worse so he always ends up buying. He uses the money from his inventions to buy an old coffee shop, then turn it into a front for an underground Lab; it's Oliver's model, he's just made it a little more innocuous. And a lot less noisy.

Occasionally Barry will turn up with Caitlin and Ronnie in tow, and they'll spend hours in his lab, which he calls The Pit, talking about recent events in both cities and everyone's lives. Caitlin's got a new job at Mercury Labs. Iris's boyfriend proposed, and Barry's now dating a detective named Patty. Caitlin and Ronnie are having a baby.

They don't talk about Dr. Wells.

Cisco works on new projects. He hadn't realized just how little he'd been working on his own stuff until he was away from Wells and his ideas, but his inspiration returns now that it has room to stretch its legs out. He builds tech for various superheroes, and eventually gains something of a reputation for it. Barry calls him The Guy That Heroes Go To For Help, but Cisco thinks of himself more as the Super IT Department.

There's one project that he's always working on, always tinkering with or contemplating in the back of his mind. It takes on several different forms, from a vehicle to a serum to a device based loosely on Dr. McGee's tachyon prototype. He gives Patty the motorcycle version, which works well enough but isn't quite what he envisioned, and gives the serum idea to Caitlin for her own pet project when he realizes it just isn't in his wheelhouse. He keeps working though, keeps tinkering, even if he doesn't know exactly what he'd do with the finished product.

Eventually, he has a prototype.

Just as he's wondering how to go about finding a worthy recipient, Barry turns up at the coffee shop.

"I think I have someone to test your Quicksilver Device," he tells Cisco, grinning excitedly, then steps aside to reveal a pretty young girl with pain and determination and just a little bit of wonder in her eyes.

"Hi," she says uncertainly, holding out a hand, "I'm Jesse Chambers."

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to checkerboardom for writing the first draft of a scene for this, thus forcing me to get my ass in gear and write the rest of it. also allergiesihate for helping me with spanish terms of endearment, and hedgiwithapen for flailing about it with me.


End file.
